No Need to Abandon 4G Smartphone, 5G Smartphone Far away From Actual Use

April 16, 2019

The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G version was launched in South Korea on April 5. This is the first genuine 5G phone, but it is not the only one. Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, VIVO, ZTE, and Lenovo will bring 5G handsets one after another. We used to say that 5G is still far away from us. But they will arrive sooner or later. This cause a question – Should we abandon 4G smartphones?

In order to clarify this issue, we first need to understand where the 5G smartphone has improved compared to 4G?

5G upgrade compared to 4G

We need to talk about the 5G network first. The 5G network has a higher speed, a lower latency, and a larger bandwidth. The advantage of the 5G network is quite obvious. The peak theoretical transmission speed can reach 10Gbps. In this year’s MWC, Huawei said that using 5G can download a 1GB movie in 3 seconds. The actual network speed of 5G is 20 times that of 4G. The latency of 5G networks is also very low.

The 5G base station is still building the impact experience. The most obvious is the speed of the network.

China has carried out phase testing of 5G networks before 2018 and began large-scale networking in 2018. The construction of 5G networks began in 2019 and is expected to be widely popularized in 2020. Minister of Industry and Information Technology mentioned that China’s 5G real commercialization is expected to be in the second half of this year. One thing we need to make clear is that if you want to use 5G, you should buy a 5G smartphone. Also, you must wait until the operator completes the 5G base station deployment.

At present, Shanghai has become China’s first 5G trial city, and 5G base stations are gradually being established. For smartphone users, the most practical impact of 5G is the speed of the network. Operators have also said that they can enjoy high-speed networks without changing cards or changing numbers.

5G power consumption is higher

Since the 5G network speed is higher, the processing capacity of the data is many times that of 4G, and the processing capability is correspondingly increased. This leads to more power consumption in 5G. In addition, today’s 5G is achieved by means of an external baseband, which also brings greater power consumption. Therefore, heat dissipation has become an important issue to consider for 5G smartphones. In order to solve the heat dissipation problem, the 5G smartphones need to add some hardware inside to improve the heat dissipation efficiency. Also, the smartphone that gets the 5G module needs to adjust the internal structure of the fuselage, and the thickness of the fuselage also needs to be controlled. However, Qualcomm said that the baseband will be integrated with the processor, and the heating problem will be improved by then.

5G smartphones are expensive

The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G version starts at 8,000 yuan ($1192). We should also point out that the original S10 costs 5,000 yuan ($745) because it’s a high-end model. Soon after the emergence of 5G smartphones, the price will become relatively low.

5G-based applications are not yet widely available

In the early stage of 5G popularization, in addition to the increase in download speed, there are still few 5G-based applications. Moreover, smartphones are not the main focus of 5G. It will be applied more in the fields of cloud and smart terminals in the future. At present, 5G is mainly used in full-customized game broadcast, remote control surgery, automatic driving, etc. This is the ultimate use of the 5G network. However, these are still in the experimental stage and are not mature enough.

Conclusion

The above are the problems brought about by the 5G network and 5G smartphones in the early stage. There is only one reason why people have to replace 5G at this stage. That is, the existing network experience cannot meet the daily needs, but obviously, 4G can obviously satisfy these. First, the 4G network speed is 10-100Mbps, and the equivalent download speed is 1.5Mb/s-10Mb/s. Our daily use, including web browsing, chatting, playing games, etc., doesn’t require high download speed. So we don’t need to buy an expensive 5G smartphone that can only download a 1GB movie in seconds.